Location Sound: Louie Anderson

This is a screenshot of a project I had the opportunity to work on. It was the recording for a podcast commercial for Louie Anderson. The project was really last minute notice for me but I took the opportunity as soon as it was presented to me.

I was able to work on it because a colleague of mine is a comedian and had connections to Louie. He set up a project to film him doing his podcast and needed someone to do audio and asked I could do it right away.

For gear, I didn't really need much, I used a Tascam DR-100 as my portable recorder and a Sennheiser ME 66 on a boom pole. I had a lavalier mic on stand by but Louie did not want to use it so I went with just the shotgun mic.

The place we shot at was at the theater inside the Plaza casino in downtown Las Vegas.  We were able to get a little tour of backstage and the gear they used before meeting with Louie. After the initial meeting Louie went to record a podcast segment with a guest he brought in. Meanwhile, we had setup our equipment and were just on standby until he finished.

When he came to shoot, he had a good idea of what he was going to say and gave us a couple of takes to work with. We got about 7 takes we could work with and from there we just had to pick one. Louie also gave us a copy of some of his pictures we could use in the commercial, which pop up during it.

When going into editing, it wasn't too hard to find a take that was good, I had a few problems with the audio though. The A/C was very prominent so I used a high pass filter to get rid of most of it. Also, there were times where Louie would be louder in some parts of his dialog but that was easily fixed with adjusting the gain at certain parts. The last thing I added was the music as the background. I wanted the commercial to have like a lighthearted feel and I think that the music makes it come off as exactly that.

Overall, the project was easy and a great opportunity to work with someone who is recognizable and has a name and reputation.